Translation

This is an on-going record of an in-part disappearing way of life in El Maestrat, Castellon. Please click on ANY photo on the home page to read and see more – all posts are updated with new photos as I take them! The finca diaries have the latest posts at the bottom.

Pepe Nebot and life in a haze

A friend of mine kept on talking about an artist who used to live in Majorca and had had considerable international success with his paintings of the famous -mostly beautiful women, Claudia Schiffer amongst. Now he was back in Castellon and we had to visit him. With my camera of course.

Now, I like artists, of course I do. And I love taking their photos, but I have done SO MANY, and famous and important people mean absolutely nothing to me. I mean I feel I need to write and portray more than artists and important people (aren’t we all important?) and while we are at it everyday normal life, especially while much of the world seems to be falling apart at the seams.

But after about one million requests, of course I agreed, especially when presented with a brochure of one of his exhibitions in which there was a purported naked painting of Brooke Shields. As if. I used to live above her oh so many years ago in Manhattan on the Upper East Side, 321 East 73 Street to be exact, and I can categorically state that this voluptuous form was neither her body, nor any pose she would splay. Pun intended, my curiosity aroused.

So one balmy Friday afternoon we descended coast wards in my mud encrusted right hand drive Skoda to the inner more charming streets of Castellon (yes there are a few) and parked on a street where miracle or miracles we found a space. Then we walked to a rather nice looking bar with lots of tables outside and an intimate dark space inside with oodles of interesting bits on the walls. Memorabilia. Just the kind of place I like as it reminds me of my heyday in NYC, in fact I had eaten in just such a place with Brooke and her mother once. She had veal Marsala and picked at it intrepidly as if it might bite her.

This held promise and immediately I began to look forward to having a slightly wild time with a notorious local artist made good. Famous, if you will.

Yes, this is where Pepe met us and I got the shock of my life.

Not what I expected.

During my prepping I had been shown a photo of him, a stunning, dangerous, sexy man, but here in front of me was a tall bloated person with humility and sorrow in his very being. I thought he would order an alcoholic beverage but he took an herbal tea. I was somewhat disappointed; I mean the dark bar invited something more exciting. Still, not to be put off, I had the usual white wine, as did my companion. Pepe talked about himself a bit, in a rambling way that I found difficult to follow. Whenever there was a phrase I could actually get to grips with, I asked what I hoped was a relevant question and thus I formed a nutshell of a story from the horse’s somewhat tranquilized mouth.

Pepe Nebot lost his youth in a haze of alcohol, drugs and women. The result is that now he is on anti-depressants or the like, so another haze. They tell me I am mad, he said, but I am not. I have not touched alcohol in eight years.

Who knows what madness is, but he did confess to being sectioned on several occasions. They would like to section me again, he said, but my brother lent me a flat.

Here he can live and work. With a maid – to keep an eye on him I suppose.

We went to see it, and Pepe’s work. This is the smallest place I have ever worked in, he told me, as we entered the building’s lift. I detected some embarrassment, and also more clarity than he physically portrayed. As we ascended, he appeared to fill the tiny strangely lit space and for a moment seemed quite normal. As we got out, someone got in, and he put his key in the door opposite, repeating this “apology”. We entered. It was just a flat, a fairly spacious flat, but very normal. Not a studio by any means. Everything was very normal. Whatever that means.

Straight off Pepe took us to the room in front in which were stacked many paintings, indeed most of famous women, including Kate Middleton. To the side, on a ledge, were a number of cut outs from newspapers and magazines of the same famous women. It did not take an O’level to work out how he had painted so many. I think you call it painting by numerical distance. Or maybe now it was.

The paintings, which I prefer to call comic styled sketches, were simple and clean, all executed would you believe it with children’s paints. Each face was instantly recognizable, much like those done by street artists all over the world who offer to do you in 10 minutes for a few pounds. Maybe not as individualistic, for most of Pepe’s women were semi naked with the same breasts, rounded in the form of well-executed implants. And no comic implications. It begged the question whether he had ever actually seen a naked woman and whether his years of drugs were fuelled by this lack.

Not a very kind observation I admit, especially as the truth is that Pepe Nebot comes across as a very nice humble man. I could not identify him with the illicit drug fuelled person he had been, nor the photo of him so devastatingly good looking so many years ago. But the truth must be told.

I asked him about Claudia Schiffer. He was open. I was obsessed with her, he stated simply, I had a lovely partner, but it ruined my relationship, and so did the drugs. Now I take nothing.

Well, just legal medication, I thought. And this makes you different too.

I photographed him in various corners of his flat, and he appeared to enjoy it, sometimes adding good suggestions that were also surprisingly conservative such as writing at a desk. There were mounds and mounds of paper everywhere, frantic writing in indecipherable script like rolls of toilet paper, reminiscent of Jack Kerouac’s creation of “On the Road”. Sometimes Pepe looked liked a sorry gone to seed kind of guy, and then other times I saw a kernel of intense sex in his eyes.

I wondered.

I wondered about my theories vis-à-vis Pepe, and whether I had in any way got it right at all. It seems he has spent his whole adult life in one haze or another and who can see through that – in either direction for that matter? I walked around the sparsely furnished flat, it was fairly tidy, but then again he has a maid. A variety of crumpled under garments were scattered across his bed and floor. The bed was un-made. The un-made bed. Now where have I heard of that?

Before we left, he asked to me send him both some photos and some clients. Then he added, do you want a portrait? Glancing around at the naked images, and as much as I would love to be in the company of Claudia Schiffer, I politely declined. I am not ready to be paint-shopped yet.

PLEASE NOTE: I have not posted the supposed Brooke Shields painting as it would not have been correct to do so. I am happy to relate that in a subsequent catalogue her name was removed from the painting and I think we can say “it was an erratum”.

UPDATE! – Pepe Nebot has since been sectioned.

For a Spanish translation of this post by Anna Bellés, please click on the Spanish flag above